Developed countries often sell toxic and hazardous wastes to poorer developing countries. This practice is known as the global waste trade. Wealthy nations are exporting their problem to emerging countries, mainly in African and Asian regions, which pose a severe threat to human health and the environment in the communities they are located in.
The world’s affluent countries find it substantially cheaper to export their hazardous waste halfway around the world to emerging countries for disposal, where environmental awareness and regulations are limited. Moreover, with the world over liberalization of trade policies, developing countries, with little to offer to global trade, were often forced to accept waste imports as an instrument of economic expansion. These circumstances inadvertently made underdeveloped countries a dump yard to the wealthier countries of the globe.
Various types of waste that are difficult to process are gotten rid of in this manner. The most toxic include radioactive waste, electronic waste and incinerator ash. So now the question arises, why are developed nations dumping their garbage in developing countries like the Philippines, Sweden, Ghana, Nigeria, Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh or even India.
Because shipping municipal waste to less developed countries is about four to six times cheaper than recycling it on their own land, while it costs $85 to recycle a ton of garbage after segregation in Britain, shipping the rubbish to economically weaker countries costs just about $30.
On the other hand, because developing countries are usually not as economically robust as the United States, people in these poorer countries tend to buy fewer products with less packaging, and they produce less waste than Americans or residents of other industrialized nations.
Unlike developed nations, emerging countries in the developing world often have not developed adequate waste management policies, systems, trash collection services, or government institutions to manage their wastes properly.
“Most developing countries don’t have an organized means of controlling solid waste. Garbage is rarely even collected on a regular basis. Regulations vary from country to country and from town to town, and often a small bribe from an apprehended illegal trash dumper will trump enforcement of official regulations, anyway. Laws are often lax—burning of garbage and open dumping allowed. Frequently, a lack of funds prevents municipalities in such countries from ever being able to even create a proper waste management system, in the first place,” reads a report on Climate Policy Watcher.
The developed countries try to maintain their environmental credentials behind this toxic waste trade. In contrast, the developing countries covertly take advantage of the weak governance to remove their environmental misdemeanours. Due to lack of environmental regulations and little public opposition, ignorance of the health impacts, comparatively low-cost disposal methods make poorer nations an attractive target for many developed countries to export their hazardous waste.
Global Illegal Trade Of Plastic Waste
Unfortunately, illegal traffic of hazardous waste is still prevalent in all corners of the world. From an environmental justice perspective, the idea of richer countries disposing of their garbage in poorer countries is outrageous. The fact that the global waste market exists, however, signals that there is something more to the story.
Global waste trade is a multi-billion dollar industry. For example, the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database recorded that the world’s plastic waste export and import in 2017 was valued at $4.5 billion and $6.1 billion, respectively.
The world waste trade has formed a billion-dollar global industry directly linked to arms trafficking, money laundering and other smuggling activities. Third-world workers, who lack the essential equipment for working with hazardous material, risk their health and lives to process the toxic waste. It is not their fate that they are forced to utilize such toxic plastic and other kinds of waste, but it leads to an illegal business of plastic waste management.
Despite the existence of several international conventions that prohibit the dumping of first-world waste, such as the Bamako Convention and the Basel Convention, it has not only continued but also formed a billion-dollar global industry that studies have shown is linked to arms trafficking and money laundering. Big criminals use Hawala methods to run this illegal trade. Legal and illegal businesses are included in a legal waste company, and the money coming from both ways goes to the exporting countries.
In most cases, it has also been seen that people associated with the illegal trafficking of waste business are also involved in other unlawful activities like child trafficking, arms supply, and drug smuggling. Money for such crimes is also being received from the illegal waste trade.
Illegal waste trafficking is a little-known, lucrative business with devastating consequences for human health and the environment. It includes transporting waste on the black market, mixing different types of waste, declaring hazardous waste as non-hazardous, or classifying waste as second-hand goods. Indeed, when products are classified as second-hand goods, they are no longer governed by international waste regulations and can be traded with developing countries. For instance, e-waste and used car parts are often disguised as second-hand goods and end up being recycled in an unsafe manner.
This leads to an enormous grey area when distinguishing legal from illegal waste shipments, making enforcement very difficult. These imports also put pressure on port infrastructure. Since China introduced the ban, neighbouring countries and certain African countries have become increasingly targeted by shippers of illegal waste. Even when shipments are legal, these countries cannot accommodate them at their ports and other entry points.
Recent years have witnessed an alarming increase in the illegal trade of plastic waste, with high-income countries consuming plastic products and packaging at unsustainable rates and exporting their plastic waste to developing countries with little capacity and infrastructure to manage it.
Unsustainable production and consumption of plastic have been supported by exporting waste to countries with lower energy and labour costs, devastatingly impacting ecosystems, workers, and communities worldwide. Illegal exports and dumpsites are now widespread, curbing environmental health, social wellbeing, and economic development. Thousands of lives are cut short through appalling sickness caused by informal burning, with exploitative working conditions and even child labour now all too familiar.
While relatively weak environmental standards in developing countries are often seen to be a key factor in the emergence of waste havens in cross-country studies, little attention has been given to examining the pattern of waste trade in a developing country over time.
Do Waste Trade Companies Follow Basel Convention?
The Basel Convention is an international treaty signed in 1989, designed to prevent the movement of hazardous waste from developed to developing countries. This treaty defined illegal trafficking as a transboundary movement of hazardous wastes.
But, there’s a dark side to the global trade in the garbage: A 2019 (amended) treaty aimed to stem the flow of plastic waste from wealthy nations to poor ones. But traders have found ways to bypass the rules.
For instance, the Basel convention states that before exporting low-grade plastics, it must obtain permission from the recipient country’s government. However, plastic traders flout not only this treaty but also the waste is loaded into the ship with wrong labelling so that it can be easily passed during custom checking in western countries. Even in developing countries, companies easily pass by checking.
Unrecyclable or hazardous waste is shipped to developing countries under the pretext of “recycling“. But, ultimately, instead of being transported to a recycling plant, the waste is often found in landfill sites or incineration units, leaving the citizens of developing countries to live with the waste and its effects.
In one case, 4,000 tons of toxic waste were shipped to Nigeria falsely labelled as “fertilizers”. The waste included 150 tons of highly toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, known to cause hormone deficiencies and reduced cognitive development in children. “The Italian company deceived a retired/illiterate timber worker into agreeing to store the poison in his backyard.” The toxic chemicals leaked into the local river causing the death of 19 people. The company made $4.3 million from the dirty trade (source: The WorldCounts).
Even when local government authorities refuse to accept the waste of the West, the containers are shipped off to another developing country where they might be accepted. Attempts to deport illegal waste back to the country of origin prove to be another battle as developing nations often find that exporting countries refuse to take back their own waste.
The lead from electronic waste is another direct threat to human life. The landfills used for burying electronic waste result in the lead seeping into the ground and eventually into the local water supply. In Lagos, Nigeria, reports from the World Health Organization and the Lancet have linked several health hazards, such as higher rates of thyroid dysfunctions in women and irreversible damage to the central nervous system of children, to electronic waste dumped there from the first world.
Corruption has reached its peak in the global waste trade, where officials are openly bribed for the easy disposal of garbage. Companies are ignoring the Basel Convention Rules without any fear.
Is India Also A Global Waste Dumping Ground?
According to reports, a lot of European waste, including metals, textiles and tires, ends up in India, along with a lot of illegal e-waste. India is one of the largest importers of waste in the world, with metallic scrap constituting the bulk of the waste imports.
Unfortunately, the country has poorly equipped facilities which cannot effectively process the waste, so they end up in incinerators or landfills instead.
India is also the location of the Alang shipyards, where half of all the ships salvaged worldwide are sent for recycling. Hundreds of manual labourers dismantle the ships, often in hazardous conditions. For example, cement factories in Tamil Nadu are a big importer of toxic garbage on the pretext of using it as fuel. To hoodwink customs, these consignments are booked innocuously as ‘mixed waste paper, plastic scrape or latex’.
A recent report by the Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment (CSE) says that apart from generating about 3,50,000 tonnes of electronic waste every year, India imports another 50,000 tonnes. The study alleges that the unorganized sector recycles more than 90% of this, and instead of organizing this sector, the government chooses to ignore it.
The organization also says that attero recycling which has the only license in India to import e-waste is reselling e-waste instead of recycling it. It is illegally trading e-waste and such illegal trade results in huge pollution in the industry.
As per the data, India generated 3,30,000 tonnes of e-waste in 2007, equal to 110 mn laptops. About 10% of the e-waste is recycled every year, the remaining is refurbished, and the unorganized sector is behind almost all of it. Informal dealers refurbish and make money from e-waste.